Part Three: How The Navy SEALs Lost Their Mind

Summary

Behind the Bastards: Part Three — How The Navy SEALs Lost Their Mind

Episode Overview

In this third installment of the series on Richard Marcinko, founder of SEAL Team 6, host Bobby Finger and guest Andrew T. move beyond Marcinko’s personal story to examine the legacy he left behind. The focus is on how the cultural foundations and ethos he instilled contributed to the “ongoing derangement” of Navy SEALs, culminating in a pattern of disastrous operations, war crimes, internal dysfunction, and a descent into violent, unaccountable behavior—especially within SEAL Team 6 and its successors during the post-9/11 era.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

SEAL Team 6 Under Marcinko and Its First Operations

• Leadership & Early Actions (05:08–07:39):

  • Marcinko’s short tenure as SEAL Team 6 commander (1980–1983) set the tone for future problems, though major infamous actions occurred after his departure.
  • The team's “baptism by fire” happened during the invasion of Grenada, where poor planning and egotism led directly to loss of life.
  • Quote: “Given Richard's bloodthirsty nature and his frequently stated love of killing, it's tragic that he missed SEAL Team 6 getting its baptism in fire on a little island called Grenada.” — Bobby (05:39)
  • SEALs drowned due to carrying excessive gear for the sake of “doing it the cool way” rather than what was necessary or safe.

• Failure and Ego-Driven Decision-Making (07:45–08:39):

  • Team 6 undertook unnecessarily dangerous and performative operations, showing off rather than opting for safer, effective methods.
  • Even contemporary pro-SEAL sources argued they died out of over-eagerness to “prove their skills.”

Integration and the Rise of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)

• Structural Changes (10:09–12:58):
  • The failures in Grenada precipitated the restructuring of US Special Forces through JSOC to cover all Special Forces, not just SEALs. This grew the SEALs from ~1,000 to 2,000–doubling their size following Vietnam.
  • Debates between SEAL, Green Beret, Delta, and Ranger roles reveal overlapping and sometimes GI Joe-esque branding, often with redundancy.
  • Quote: “Sometimes, especially today, a lot of these units have overlapping capabilities and, like, purposes...” — Bobby (12:42)

The Red Cell Era: From Security Exercises to Abuse

• Red Cell & Marcinko’s Revenge (13:57–18:10):

  • Marcinko formed Red Cell—a unit designed to test Navy base security, but used it to terrorize and revenge on people he disliked.
  • Civilian security chief Ron Sheridan was kidnapped, nearly shot by his wife (who escorted him with a gun every day), then tortured and waterboarded by Red Cell.
  • Even in these “simulations,” SEALs got injured—one broke a rib while beating Sheridan.
  • Quote: “This lady got the drop on his elite Navy SEAL and nearly killed him. In his LARPing job testing security on naval bases.” — Bobby (16:31)
  • Marcinko had video evidence edited to hide abuse but was eventually fired and investigated.

• Corruption Probe & Downfall (19:59–24:47):

  • Investigations unearthed extensive fraud, fake receipts, and illegal trophy-taking from Grenada.
  • A comically inept scheme to sell grenades to the Navy and embezzle profits resulted in federal charges—Marcinko was convicted and imprisoned, ending his official military career.
  • Quote: “A government agency raiding, in effect, one of the Navy's most secret and most vital military units. So this is like a big deal investigation.” — Bobby (21:13)

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The Post-Marcinko SEALs — From DEVGRU to Disaster

Grenada ↔ Panama ↔ Desert Storm: Repeating Mistakes

• Lessons Not Learned (29:21–36:41):

  • Panama: Despite abundant planning time, SEALs failed spectacularly. Sent in with only small arms against an entrenched position, several were killed or wounded. The operation highlighted a mismatch between SEAL mythology and actual battlefield utility.
    • Quote: “This is not a thing any guys should be doing. We know if you just send dudes directly into the maw of a machine gun, they die. It doesn't matter if they're seals.” — Bobby (33:18)
  • Desert Storm: One of the few operations that went well, thanks to leadership that distrusted the commando mythos and used SEALs appropriately.

• Institutional Unaccountability (36:41–41:54):

  • SEALs as a whole resisted introspection and critique, avoiding rigorous review after failed operations. A few walked out of debriefs “so disturbed.”
  • Quote: “SEALs have not been very good at learning from their experiences, especially when things go wrong and applying those lessons to the future.” — Bobby (37:45)
  • The culture leaned into violence and the glorified self-mythology of “elite warriors,” shunning the “hearts and minds” skills other Special Forces cultivated.

Marcinko’s Civilian Legacy: Rogue Warrior

• Mythologizing and Civilian Fame (41:54–44:59):
  • After release from prison, Marcinko published Rogue Warrior, which blurred the lines between (dubious) autobiography and outright fiction, further fueling the superhero image of Navy SEALs for public consumption.
  • Quote: “It was through these novels, which make him a rich man, that Marcinko would prove himself forever the smartest member of Team 6. Instead of risking his freedom and money by telling US government secrets like some subsequent Team 6 members, he could just lie and pretend to be giving away secrets.” — Bobby (43:36)

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The Post-9/11 Era: Moral Decay and the Spread of War Crimes

Afghanistan and the Culture of Brutality

• Transformation Under Fire (52:22–57:33):

  • Early Afghanistan SEAL missions were marred by avoidable civilian deaths (e.g., an old man carrying a cassette tape, shot on suspicion of being a threat).
  • Quote: “No cop will ever have more training than Vic Heiter is. He shot a man with a fucking cassette in his hand.” — Bobby (53:41)
  • The myth of superior training fails as protection against atrocity—training does not equate to judgment or accountability.
  • Internal SEAL division: Some complained about these actions, but the command dismissed it as “officer-enlisted rivalry” instead of addressing actual wrongdoing.

• Racism and Self-Mythologizing (55:57–57:33):

  • Mascot culture in SEAL Team 6 teams—Red Men (with racist appropriations), Pirates, Crusaders—reflected and reinforced insular, violent, and sometimes bigoted worldviews.
  • Red Team’s evolving “metamorphosis” into “Native American warriors” directly contributed to later excesses, like scalp-taking.

Atrocity, Escalation, and Internal Fracture

• Cycle of Violence (57:33–66:55):

  • Descriptions of escalating brutality, with units divided between those who saw themselves as “quiet professionals” and those modeled on Marcinko’s piratical ethos.
  • In March 2002, after a SEAL’s body was found mutilated by Al Qaeda, an internal meeting showed most operators agreed “not to mutilate corpses”—but a minority wanted to continue, and nobody reported prior offenses.
    • Quote: “I can't go live with the pigs and then not get dirty… if you ask me to go murder people in the middle of nowhere repeatedly, right? Regardless of what side they're on, they're wind up doing ugly things.” — Bobby (63:31 and 65:18)
  • Institutional unwillingness to punish crimes meant abusers simply got “iced out” or quietly reassigned. No real accountability.

• The Failure of Self-Policing (66:55–70:22):

  • Peer pressure and fear silenced saner SEALs; internal justice meant merely excluding bad actors, not reporting them.
  • Quote: “The SEALs believe that they can handle the discipline themselves that's equal or greater to what the criminal justice system would give to that person.” — Bobby (67:27)
  • This culture directly seeded the rise of even worse excesses—escalating violence, war crimes, and normalization of depravity.

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Memorable Quotes

• On SEAL culture and brutality:

  “For as tough as they claim to be… there’s too many of them think that this really only extends to their ability to kill, not their ability to keep their head and their sense of morality in a horrific situation. I would say if you want to call yourselves truly elite... those are the guys that… not start massacring civilians.”—Bobby (65:18)

• On the myth vs reality:

  “It’s all branding and culture. It’s the real shit, I guess. The branding is we’re criminals and no one tells us what to do. And also we get to murder whoever we want.”—Andrew (25:21)

• On cycles of retaliation:

  “You guys want to play with those rules, okay? …If you ask me to go living with the pigs, I can’t go live with the pigs and then not get dirty.”—Team 6 leader quoted via Bobby (62:45)

• On lack of accountability:

  “These bunch who vote not to mutilate corpses are still responsible for helping to spoil the rest of the apples... they don't do that in the seals. You don't punish your own guys, you know?”—Bobby (66:59)

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Timestamps for Notable Segments

• 05:08 — Overview of Marcinko’s tenure and the Grenada mission
• 13:57 — The Red Cell kidnapping and torture episode
• 19:59 — Federal investigation and Marcinko’s downfall
• 29:21 — SEAL operation disasters in Panama
• 36:41 — Institutional lessons not learned post-Gulf War
• 41:54 — Pop-cultural mythologizing: Rogue Warrior novels and civilian adulation
• 52:22 — Post-9/11: SEAL Team 6’s bloody record in Afghanistan
• 55:57 — Mascot culture and racialized self-mythologizing
• 57:33 — Descent into atrocity: mutilations, revenge, and internal strife
• 66:55 — The myth of “self-discipline” and refusal to hold war criminals accountable

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Episode Tone & Notable Moments

• Tone: Dark, irreverent, and critical—Bobby and Andrew alternate between gallows humor and clear moral outrage, with moments of dry, pointed sarcasm targeting both the mythology of elite operators and their apologists.
• Memorable moments:
  • The story of a Navy SEAL nearly shot by a security chief’s housewife during a “kidnapping simulation.”
  • Discussion of SEALs injuring themselves while acting out their own tough-guy fantasies.
  • The absurdity of Marcinko writing “fiction” and “nonfiction” books under the same name to cash in on his notoriety.

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Conclusions

The episode paints a picture of a military culture poisoned at its root by Marcinko’s legacy: self-aggrandizement, insularity, and lack of accountability. From failed showboating missions in Grenada to the escalation of war crimes in Afghanistan, the enduring rot at the heart of SEAL Team 6 has created a cycle of violence, impunity, and mythmaking—far removed from the public’s image or the official line of “quiet professional” excellence.

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For anyone interested in the real inner workings (and failings) of US Special Forces, particularly the SEALs, this episode is an unflinching, critical companion to the myths sold in bookstores and Hollywood.

Transcript

[Bobby Finger]

Call Zone Media. It's behind the Bastards once again, the podcast where every week we tell you the worst things about the worst people in all of history. And this week we are doing parts three and four of our series on the founder of SEAL Team Six, Richard Marcinko. And in these two episodes, we will be getting, you know, past just Richard and talking about kind of how the things he set in motion led to the continuing derangement of the Navy SEALs. Well, beyond just Team 6. And back to talk with me about how things got as bad as they are now. Andrew T. Andrew, how are you doing?

[Andrew T.]

How's it going? I'm good.

[Bobby Finger]

Fine and dandy. Andrew. Fine and dandy.

[Andrew T.]

Have no war crimes this morning, so that's good.

[Bobby Finger]

You haven't committed any, right? I can't promise that.

[Andrew T.]

Yes, the world, possibly even Seal Team 6, I don't know.

[Bobby Finger]

It's entirely possible. There's a non zero chance we're back at war with Iran, if I'm remembering correctly. But that changes every day.

[Andrew T.]

The point is. I don't know.

[Bobby Finger]

The point is you don't know. And the point is also that you have a podcast.

[Andrew T.]

Yes, that is the point.

[Bobby Finger]

Yes.

[Andrew T.]

I've been doing a Star Trek podcast with Tawny Newsom, Jesse Gender. It's called Starter Trek. They are, I won't say making me watch Star Trek because I do enjoy it, but I do not know jack shit about Star Trek. So I'm muddling my way through and it's really fun. We're on podcast places and YouTube and.

[Bobby Finger]

Excellent.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah, that's what I'm doing these days. One of the things, I guess.

[Bobby Finger]

Check that out. And I've got a little plug I want to put in for some friends of the pod. A lot of you listened to the Knowledge Fight podcast, which is currently on hold or, you know, no longer being produced. But the hosts of that are two great guys, Dan and Jordan, who did wonderful work documenting Alex Jones and actually helping with, like, the legal fight against him and Infowars, and they both have new projects. So I just wanted to let you know because a lot of our listeners listen to their stuff. Dan has a new podcast called Show Me State of Mind, and Jordan has started a YouTube series of short video essays called that's Everyone Is wrong about. So YouTube everyone is wrongabout is Jordan's new thing. Yeah, that's it. And now it's time for some seals. Not the. Not the ones with, like, blubber and like, that's the kind of. I guess our Navy seals have some blubber. But they're pretty skinny usually, right? Yeah. I mean, I doubt they'd taste very good. Maybe I wouldn't try.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah, they might.

[Bobby Finger]

Man, I'll eat any kind of seal look at once. You know, I'm not going to club it, but if it's fed to me, I'll try a Navy seal. I'll try a harp seal. You know, that's just where I. That's just where I roll.

[Andrew T.]

Yep.

[Bobby Finger]

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[Bobby Finger]

Richard Marcinko commanded SEAL Team 6 from its inception in August of 1980 to July of 1983. So again, not a long run as the founder and head of SEAL Team six.

[Andrew T.]

Oh, my God, we're gonna get. We're going like more than one episode per year. This is like.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, because we're getting way beyond. There's way more. If you want to talk about the SEALs doing anything bad, you have to get out of Marcinko's era because they're not doing a lot when he's running Team C, you know, they're doing bad

[Andrew T.]

things in Vietnam, mostly to their liver, seems like.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, right, right. During that early 80s period, there's not as much shit for them to go do as there's going to be or as there was in Nam. So given Richard's bloodthirsty nature and his frequently stated love of killing, it's tragic that he missed Seal Team 6 getting its baptism and fire on a little island called Grenada. Now, most of you millennials are too young to have any memory of this, but Grenada was one of a handful of brief little mini wars that the US ran during the Reagan and Bush one years. To make us feel better about the fact that we'd lost Vietnam, we needed to get our M.O. and the only way they would do that was to invade some countries that had no chance of fighting back whatsoever. You can look in the Falklands if you want to say sorry. I don't need to.

[Andrew T.]

Confident England right now.

[Bobby Finger]

We just need a confidence builder.

[Andrew T.]

Batting practice.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah. Grenada and fucking Panama and then Desert Storm were like taking Cialis for like your military industrial complex after it gets like that middle aged Vietnam, you know, limp syndrome. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew T.]

This is the first. This is the first time this has happened.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, yeah. So Reagan took over after Carter during a time when left wing movements were spreading across Latin America and the Caribbean. There was a coup in Grenada and leftists took over the government. And he used the pretext of some US medical students who might be the next Iranian embassy hostages, to deploy overwhelming and sudden US force to the area. Their first task ended in disaster on the night of October 23rd. Prior to the invasion, a mixed team of SEALs and some air Force combat control team members parachuted into the sea to go ashore and plant beacons on an airf. Exactly the kind of thing seals are supposed to be doing. Right. The jump got botched, though, and One of the SEAL teams had way too much gear, up to £400 each, and their life vests couldn't support them. Four team six SEALs died in drowning without ever seeing combat. The rest of the mission flopped because a boat broke. So not a great first run for Team six, you know.

[Andrew T.]

Oh, man. Drowning because of too much gear is like, that sucks.

[Bobby Finger]

That sucks so bad.

[Andrew T.]

That's. But that also feels.

[Bobby Finger]

What a shitty way to die.

[Andrew T.]

It feels. I guess that's how it was going to happen. Jesus.

[Bobby Finger]

Well, someone. Again, it's the someone. Probably should have checked the math on that. I don't know. There was massive debate as to why Team 6 had needed to parachute into the water with all of that gear in the first place. Because there were other ways to have accomplished the mission. And the answer seems to have been because, like, well, it was cool as fuck to do it that way. And that's what we trained for, because that's the kind of stuff we're into. And his book or notes that SEAL Team 4 actually had wanted to do the mission instead of Team six and they were gonna use like, boats. And they might have done that, quote, had Seal Team 6 not been so eager to show off its skills in a real war. That's from Brave Men Dark Waters and Brave Men Dark Waters is a pretty positive book towards the founding of the seals and their early establishment. So the fact that or is saying that they did this because they kind of wanted to see if they could and a bunch of guys died means something, right?

[Andrew T.]

I guess the tiny thing that is like, is it heartening to know that right wing dorks have just always been around or the entire most of everyone's lifetime?

[Bobby Finger]

And they're always really bad at estimating risk, like estimating how likely things are to work for them. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, they're also likely to take certain risks, which is why a lot of people don't fight back. But that's a separate question. So a day and a half after the drowning, during the actual invasion of Grenada, SEAL Team 6 was again tasked with a special mission. This time they were asked to seize the government house and protect the Governor General, who was a representative of the British government because Grenada was a Commonwealth. And so the job was like, they would infiltrate and like get this guy and evacuate him and he would like sign a thing declaring the US invasion legal. Right. That was kind of why they wanted Team six there. But the mission gets full from the jump and they wind up under heavy Fire. Getting really badly injured, surrounded in this building by APCs, and they don't really get to do much, but they do get the Governor General, and he does sign that thing. So technically, they accomplish their political goal, but it slows the invasion. A bunch of regular Marines have to rescue the SEALs because they've gotten themselves in a bad situation. Yeah.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah. The adults have to come rescue these lunatics as you come.

[Bobby Finger]

The adults being the Marines, Right?

[Andrew T.]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah. They took a break from eating crayons to go save the children.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

Two other units from Team 6 were sent to accomplish other tasks. One had to set beacons on an airfield, and the other had to disable a radio transmitter. After the short conflict was over, there were serious questions asked by war planners. Had everything Team 6 had been asked to do been necessary? Did we need to use these guys for this? The failures witnessed in Grenada helped spur the creation of a new Joint Special Operations Command. They're basically reforming jsoc, and now it will include all Special Forces and not just a few specialized units. Now, the SEALs fought this. One way they'd established their value post Vietnam was to make themselves an integral part of carrier group operations for the Navy. But ultimately, the seals were integrated, and it was probably for the best for the seals, because being integrated to JSOC brings them a lot more money. And by 1990, it's ensured that the seals have expanded to more than 2,000 men, which is double the size they'd been in Vietnam. Because as we're kind of nearing the collapse of the Soviet Union, the post Cold War era, as that's all in sight, there's this understanding that maybe we don't need to worry about the big wars, but we need elite teams of guys who can do stuff like overthrow a government that we don't like so much. You're like, murder. Terrorists handle a hostage situation.

[Andrew T.]

Can I ask a broad question, I guess, which is like, something I've. You seem like you definitely would know this more than me, which is that, like, the JSOC of it? Why, Besides branding, or is it just branding? Why the fuck do we have so many different types of elite guys?

[Bobby Finger]

It's because they do different things. So the Navy SEALs are traditionally supposed to be number one, like water, naval operations. They work with carrier groups like we talked about. They're also supposed to be doing, like, hostage operations, assassinations, kidnapping. Whereas a unit like the Green Berets, for example, are like the guys at the start of Afghanistan. You drop a handful of them into, like, a village, and Their job is to build up a militia of locals and, like, train them and teach them how to, like, fight as a unit and stuff in order to help them accomplish the US's goals. And that's a very different skill set than the seals. The Green Berets are obviously meant need to be competent fighters, but they're supposed to be really good at, like, working with locals and not just killing them, because that's kind of the point. That's why you won a Green Beret. Right, right, right. Delta Force is also. I mean, and these kind of do get muddled, especially today. Like, what is Delta Force used for? As opposed to the team 6 is.

[Andrew T.]

As opposed to Rangers, as opposed to. Right.

[Bobby Finger]

There's a lot of them. And they all have specializations, ostensibly. Right.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah. Yeah. I guess that, to me, it's just that in the era of, like, helicopters, drones, it just seems more like GI Joe than anything else.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah. And there's an argument to be made for that. Again, not one that a lot of these guys will make, but there is an argument made that, like, sometimes, especially like today, a lot of these units have, like, overlapping capabilities and, like, purposes that it's kind of. Yeah. Anyway.

[Andrew T.]

Right, right. Okay. Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

So when we left off with Richard Marcinko, because this is the stuff that's happening, I told you in the last episode, he gets a new job creating the Red Cell, who's supposed to break into Navy bases. So while he is starting that job, that's when, like, Grenada is going on. Right. Because he's out of the of Team Six by that point. So let's get back to Richard for a little bit. When we left off, Marcinko had charmed his way into getting a classified unit Red Cell, which he got to train up and could use to break into any Navy facility he chose. He was also supposed to use them to kidnap sensitive employees of said facilities to test their security protocols. This latter remit gave Marcinko a chance to get back at the people he hated and blamed for all of his lazy officers and civilians with cushy desk jobs. Right. He gets to, like, fuck with these guys for a living now. So he and his men often forced kidnap victims to carry out intense workouts and would, like, mock them for their performance and otherwise. They're not, like, supposed to beat them up usually, but they are crossing that line or getting right up to it a lot, because they're dicks.

[Andrew T.]

I will just say if, like, the Daily Wire or someone like that had any actual chops, you could make, like, kind of like a right wing version of dirty work out of this story. Yeah, that would be, you know, probably funny enough, honestly.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, there's a great script in this tale. I'm surprised it hasn't been made into a movie. So complaints were pretty minimal at first, right? Because they're not really beating people. And so it was easy to dismiss people saying, hey, but they're really dicks to us as like kind of sour grapes because you're not good at your security. And the CEO showed you up. But then Marcinko's Red Cell started crossing paths with a man named Ronald Sheridan. Now, Ron was not a soldier, but the civilian head of security for a naval weapons facility. He had criticized the flaws in the team analysis of his facility when they'd shown up on site. And he had denied Marcinko the use of his facilities to plan their operations. He's like, basically, okay, if you want to try to bust in, you can't like use facilities on the base for your planning. Right. If you're trying to cosplay as an enemy, you can't like prep inside the base, you know, because they won't get to.

[Andrew T.]

Get your own Motel 6, asshole.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, get your. That's literally what he's saying, right? And Marcega does not love this, so I'm going to quote again from Code Over Country. The team instead worked from a local dive called Garfs. There, Marcinko and the team plotted their next operation while drinking day and night. This included how to terrorize Sheridan. The strict rules of engagement called for all operations to occur at the naval facility being probed and for the operators to only use force to simulate getting control of a target. Sheridan lived in Eagle Rock, a Los Angeles suburb north of Seal Beach. By the time the two operators, Frank Phillips and Arturo Farias, showed up at Sheridan's home, they had already gone too far. So from the jump, they shouldn't be at this guy's house. And they are. On March 20, 1986, the Red Cell moves in to kidnap Ron Sheridan. But here's the thing. Sheridan knows he's got a really sensitive job and he takes it seriously. And so does his wife. She takes it really seriously. So when Frank Phillips tries to kidnap Ron Sheridan, his wife is there. His wife Margaret is there with a gun. Every morning she walks him out to his car with a loaded.45 and she nearly shoots him Phillips two times. And he has to like, explain and show them his badge. And Ron agrees to go with him for the good of the exercise. Although I think you could agree they beat the exercise.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

This lady got the drop on his elite Navy SEAL and nearly killed him. In his LARPing job testing security on naval bases. He almost gets a SEAL killed by a housewife.

[Andrew T.]

Like that is. It's so funny. That's so good. That's really good. Good.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, like, like I would say, I guess his security was pretty good. Like, sounds like Sheridan's got it on lock. But instead they kidnap this guy and they take him to a shitty motel where they like sit and watch TV with him for most of the day. And he's like putting up with it for a while, but after a few hours he's like, I gotta go home, guys. Like, why are we still doing this? And the seals are like, no. And he's like, seriously, let me go. And so they call Marcinko. And Marcinko is still, still at the bar and is very drunk and continuing to drink during the operation. And he's like, that fucker wants to leave, tear him a new asshole and have the camera team film it. So he orders his guys to beat him up and film it. So two Red Cell operators bust into the hotel room and start beating the shit out of Sheridan. They strip him to his underwear and tie him to a chair while calling him a pussy. They beat him. They waterboard him in a toilet. Now again, all of these Red Cell guys are seals. Former seals. They're the best of the best. A lot of Team Six guys. And yet while beating an unarmed tied up man, they still took casualties. One operator fell on Sheridan while torturing him and broke a rib. They lose a man beating up a tied up dude. The best of the best. Only the most elite.

[Andrew T.]

Only a SEAL could tick out a seal. Clearly in both these instances we've talked about today.

[Bobby Finger]

Well, only a civilian security employee's body can take out a SEAL or his wife.

[Andrew T.]

Well, SEAL took himself down. Yeah, well, that's true, I guess.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah. Rob's wife later said after her husband was returned, I wish I had shot that guy.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

And I get it, Margaret. That's a fair way to feel.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah. I will say just broadly, we're kind of getting close to this era of like we're starting to see law enforcement fight other law enforcement at the margins, you know, ICE arresting like local cops and stuff.

[Bobby Finger]

Little bits, little bits.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

Yeah.

[Andrew T.]

I am a little, you know, wonder what's gonna happen one day. Cause one of these days someone's gonna do something one way or the other.

[Bobby Finger]

I guess it probably won't be the fun version of it. But we can.

[Andrew T.]

It never is, I guess.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the fact that his guys had beat up the student filmed it didn't look good for Marcinko. So he had the tape edited to remove the worst of the beating. But Sheridan reported the abuse and the Navy got access to the full video. Marcinko insisted nothing abnormal happened. But he was fired from Red Cell a month later and given an admiral's mast this time. Now his clout held up yet again. It ensured him a slap on the wrist punishment. But a month later, the Navy opened an investigation into Marcinko's time as Team 6 commander. The motivating incident for this was a report. Marcinko had drunkenly pulled a gun during a military exchange trip to New Zealand. Like they and Marcinko's like this was all political, but also. And maybe it was, but also why did you drunkenly pull a gun during a military exchange Chip? And that's a good reason to fire a guy, I'd say.

[Andrew T.]

Why did you bring a gun to New Zealand?

[Bobby Finger]

I mean, I'm sure maybe he gets like these in the military. I'm sure that was you.

[Andrew T.]

So badass. You should I say this. I'm so sorry.

[Bobby Finger]

He should he you.

[Andrew T.]

If you're a seal, if you're the king of the seals, you should be able to fight New Zealand bare handed. That's all.

[Bobby Finger]

You should be able to fight New Zealand barehanded. I mean, come on.

[Andrew T.]

Like, come on, get the fuck out of here. Get real, bro.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah. So the seals clammed up and defended Marcinko. And for a while it seemed like he'd get away with this too. But after the word got out that Richard was about to be promoted to captain, a bunch of officers inside Navy Special Forces flipped out. And these are not like big Navy guys, these are Special Forces guys. And they realize what a fucking poison Marcinko is to everything they are trying to do. One of these dudes actually writes a seven page letter to Ronald Reagan being like, please do not promote this man. But ultimately decides instead to call Naval Investigative Services and report some of what he knew about the fraud Marcinko had enabled and carried out in Team Six. This caused the launch of a probe in the spring of 1986, which turned into a full investigation. Nicknamed Iron Eagle, Marcinko would later blame all of this on eggheads and Big Navy who he'd offended and lightly tortured while at Red Cell. But the lead investigator was Clifford Seiben, a former Army Ranger who'd earned a Bronze Star in combat he was a huge supporter of the mission of the SEALs. He just wasn't willing to let Marcinko get away with corruption. From the book Brave Men, Dark Waters. Quote. At one point, they hired a truck, backed it up to the door of Team 6 headquarters and carted away the team records, about 50 boxes of them. It was an extraordinary scene. A government agency raiding, in effect, one of the Navy's most secret and most vital military units. So this is like a big deal investigation?

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

Like that's scandalous. Honestly.

[Andrew T.]

Crazy. They kept any records though? Given the small amount I know about them, yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

So at first, the actual evidence against Marcinko seemed thin. He'd done a pretty good job covering his tracks. But eventually investigating agents found out that one of his top seals, a man who'd actually fought in Grenada, John Mason, had also taken trophies back from grenada with him. AK47s. And that was illegal. Trophy taking is illegal now. Importing automatic weapons is definitely not. You're not supposed to be doing that.

[Andrew T.]

Of the trophies, aks is not the most illegal kind. Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

And look, would it be tempting were I and John Mason.

[Andrew T.]

Of course.

[Bobby Finger]

You can't expect superhuman self control. That's why you build guide rails into the systems like this. So they decided to look into Mason. And sure enough, he'd filed a shitload of fake receipts. So many that he'd had them printed at print shops to mimic real receipts. He had, like, ongoing relationships with print shops to fake receipts that he sent in to the Navy to get reimbursed for stuff. Oh, my God. That's pretty funny.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

So investigators get Mason dead to rights, and they're like, hey, you wanna keep that Navy SEAL wall of silence up or do you wanna not go to prison? And Mason says, oh, I'll roll on Dick if they. It's between that and prison. So he gives them a bunch of information about widespread financial improprieties directed by Marcinko. Mason was charged with 37 counts of various kinds of fraud and offered a suspended sentence for flipping on Marcinko. He agreed, and he gave the Navy info on a scam Marcinko had just perpetrated during his Red Cell days. Dick had cooked up a scheme with Mason after Mason had left the Navy and was a civilian working for a contractor. Marcinko ordered agreed to order 4300 experimental grenades for Red Cell, with SEAL Team 6 sponsoring the contract because Red Cell's a classified unit, so they're doing purchasing through Red Cell right now. The idea was that these 4300 experimental grenades were repinnable, so if you pulled out the pin, you could change your mind later, I guess, and like put it back in so you could make the grenade safe. And he wanted to test them with his new elite unit. There's debates about this. One source says they were just normal grenades. That was always a lie in his book. Orr seems to be convinced that they were experimental grenades. I don't know the truth. The grenades sold for $310,000, and the manufacturer kicked 110,000 back to Ramco, the company that Marcinko and Mason had formed. So he is lying to just get startup money for a new business. Like that's the purpose here is like, they're creating a con grenade buy in order to steal money from the Navy that they will then put into a business for their civilian lives. Right? So that was the idea. But Mason gets the money first, and he blows all of their money on fancy cars and like a lavish office space for the. I don't even know what the business was supposed to be. So in 1987, Marcinko is tried in federal court with bribery and conspiracy. The first trial ends in a hung jury, and the second, in January of 1990, sees him found guilty and sentenced to 21 months in a minimum security prison. So Richard goes away for a while. He's out of the Navy, and he is officially Persona non grata among the seals. And this is the end of his military career, right? Richard Marcingo, we'll hear from him a couple of times. Still, old Dickie's still out there.

[Andrew T.]

Oh, good.

[Bobby Finger]

But he's not in charge of anything. In 1987, the name of SEAL Team 6 was changed to Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU. And this is the official name today they're no longer called Team Six. People still call them Team Six all the time. People. I mean, a lot of people know they're called devgru too, but like, Devgru is the official name, right? And as you might guess by the fact that everyone does still call it Seal Team 6, Marcinko's legacy was hard to eradicate. Right. You can change the name, but you can't necessarily change the culture that this guy started off in there.

[Andrew T.]

It's all branding and culture. It's the real shit, I guess the

[Bobby Finger]

branding is we're criminals and no one tells us what to do. And also we get to murder whoever we want. Yeah, shocking that branding caused some problems. You know whose branding has never caused problems, though? I was hoping you wouldn't do this pretty good. It's pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good Ad pivot All right, everybody go away. Well, don't go away. Listen to ads. This ad is brought to you by Veeve Healthcare, the makers of Dovato Dolutegravir lamivudine. If you're living with hiv, do learn about Dovato. Dovato is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Dovato is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Dovato is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Dovato.

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Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit Dovato.com or call 1-877-8448. Let's talk about a condition many people haven't heard of and it turns out it's more common than you'd think. Peyronie's disease, or PD for short. PD can happen when scar tissue builds up under the skin of the penis. This can cause a curve with a bump during an erection and for some men lead to pain during intimacy and may impact mental health. It may also lead to anger and frustration, depression, lowered self esteem and even withdrawal from sexual activity and physical intimacy. Because of this, some men could feel embarrassed or reluctant to talk about pd. The actual cause of PD isn't always known. In some cases it may be linked to a minor injury or repeated injuries during sex or other physical activity. The good news is PD is treatable. If you notice a curve with a bump, a trusted urology specialist can help diagnose it and walk you through your options, including non surgical treatment. To learn more about Peyronie's disease, visit talkaboutpd.com hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment

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[Bobby Finger]

We're back. So It's December of 1989. The good people of the George H.W. bush administration have decided that the United States still has not gotten enough of its mojo back post Vietnam. And so we invade Panama. There are other reasons involving Manuel Noriega and cocaine, but we went over those in our behind the Bastards episodes on Panama with Chelsea Manning. So go listen to those if you want to know why Panama happened. Contrasting with Grenada, there was a ton of time to plan before invading Panama. Grenada, they have to throw together really quick, which is part of why shit's so slapped. Ash. Panama shouldn't have been, in part because, like, while they're planning it, we have bases there. So we literally have like our guys planning the invasion just like walking around and like taking notes on the stuff they're gonna be doing for a while. That's really kind of the ideal situation to invade another country.

[Andrew T.]

I mean, it's the Red Team. You know, it's the red cell approach. Just live.

[Bobby Finger]

Don't even need a red cell.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

However, the fact that we have all this planning time may have actually hurt the seals. Because the people of Panama are generally friendly. They really like Americans. They tend to be nice. They tended to be nice to American soldiers. That was the attitude of the government at the time. And so the Bush administration doesn't want to have a lot of civilian casualties to explain it, doesn't want damage to a lot of infrastructure. Right. They just want Noriega out and to be able to, like, you know, do their own stuff. Right. So they task the SEALs with taking and capturing the airport that holds Noriega's jet. And they task them with doing it only with small arms. So we're not going to try to take this out with an airstrike and we're not going to give you guys heavier equipment and we're not going to give you like, send in a larger unit or unit backed up with armor. We're going to send in a small group of elite seals with small arms to take this hangar. Right. So the guys that send in.

[Andrew T.]

It feels like the seal's bluff has just been called. Basically.

[Bobby Finger]

It's like, okay, kind of does, kind of does.

[Andrew T.]

Captain Badass. You should be able to do this with like a knife.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah. So this is not team six. This is SEAL Team four. But the op is a massive shit show. So much of one that it becomes historic because the seals kind of, as they're approaching this hangar, they have to do so in the open and they have like night vision. So when they get up to a certain point, they can see who's in the hangar. But that's also the point at which they're like 10 or 15 something yards away. And so they get up close and the second they see these guys, they realize they're completely in the open. And there's like a dozen or so guys, dudes in there who are all have guns trained on them and immediately open fire and there is zero cover. And if you watch like movies the way Navy SEALs are, you've got something like 24, I think, like around two dozen SEALs or more. It's like a. It's like a. Was a historically large group of seals. There were huge arguments about should multiple platoons, because we don't. SEALs don't train to fight that way at this time. Should they have sent in like, I think it was two platoons, but they outnumbered the enemy two to one again. In the movies, they would have killed these guys in a second. But this is real life. And it doesn't matter how well trained you are in real life, if you are in the open 15 or 20 meters away from people with a machine gun, you're gonna die. And that's what happens. It's possible that only two men actually fired back into the seals, but they immediately kill four and wound like seven or eight more. They take, like half the unit out of commission almost instantly. Now, the seals do eventually accomplish the mission, but not because they take, like the hangar gets abandoned by these guys. They, like, leave after a while, and it's just. It's a really bad time. Like, the SEALs have a horrible time. A lot of them die or get horribly injured. Noriegan never even tries to go for his jet. So their sacrifice is completely meaningless and their opponents flee. Rather than being defeated in a satisfying way, it's the worst. It could have gone. And again, it's because this is not a thing any guys should be doing. We know if you just send dudes directly into the maw of a machine gun, they die. It doesn't matter if they're seals. There was no reason conventional infantry should have handled this with tanks.

[Andrew T.]

It's the same version as, like a Navy seal. This is just like. Is this the same as just like a stealth bomber being taken out with an ied? Kind of.

[Bobby Finger]

If something like that were to happen? That's kind of the idea is that, like, this incredibly valuable unit that's highly trained was sent in to do something that was. You should not have elite, highly trained operators just running into guns like that. It's stupid. Also, during the same thing, Team Six tried to capture Noriega. They didn't. In the wake of the invasion, the commander of US Forces, Lieutenant General Carl Steiner, bragged that everything had gone so well. There were no real lessons to learn. Which gives you an idea of why the US Military sometimes makes the same mistakes over and over again.

[Andrew T.]

Cover your ass. Cover your ass. It went great.

[Bobby Finger]

Okay, so the Persian Gulf conflict is probably gonna be the high watermark for unproblematic SEAL success at war. Because Commanding General Norman Schwarzkopf hated Special Forces. He's very distrusting of Special Forces. He only wants the west coast seals participating cause they're seen as less problematic. I think that's some of Richard's legacy. Still. He probably would have been annoyed if he wasn't still in prison in March of 1990. Now, maybe because there weren't guys like Marcinko around at the time the seals get integrated effectively into a broader military apparatus. During Desert Storm, at one point, like one of the things that the SEALs do, are used to do is a six man unit is sent in to create a diversion. Like they're basically swimming by a coast and they're trying to like fake and make it look like an invasion is coming by carrying out acts of like subterfuge and sabotage. And they're able to successfully draw two full Iraqi visions away from engaging the US in combat. And that's exactly the kind of shit SEALs are supposed to be doing. Right?

[Andrew T.]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Like that's undeniably useful. It does require people who think outside the box. It requires courage and creativity and it saved a bunch of lives net. Like that's a good example of how you could use guys with this sort of training. Right. So they can be used effectively, you know, outside of that, seals track and remove sea mines and they do search and rescue for downed pilots. They capture an oil platform and none of them die. So Desert Storm goes pretty well for

[Andrew T.]

the seals, but that's like most of the time it's always leadership. Right. It's always just actually being used correctly. It's doable. They are human psychos, but you can put them in the right place.

[Bobby Finger]

Schwarzkopf, number one, does not buy in to all of the bullshit around the mythology of these units. And number two, he's using them to accomplish a really reasonable thing to use a small unit like that for. Right. The tasks they're being set.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah. My memory of him is he just seemed like a guy that had a turkey sandwich with no condiments on it every day for lunch.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah. Fellow. I read his autobiography as a kid. He was a bland fellow, weirdly enough. He grew up in Tehran as a child, which is kind of strange. His dad was like an ambassador or something. It's very strange. Andrew, you think he has a white

[Ad/Promo Voice]

bread turkey sandwich, no seasoning, with just

[Bobby Finger]

a piece of lettuce?

[Andrew T.]

Yeah, lettuce.

[Bobby Finger]

He's one of the whitest men you can imagine.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

Storm and Norman. Absolutely hilarious.

[Andrew T.]

Half a packet of mayo has to be a form of packet.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, half a packet of mayo, but just next to the sandwich. Like my grandpa used to just open a bottle of vermouth when he was mixing his martinis. That kind of idea. Just a smell towards seasoning.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

Salt is in the house next door. Yes. So by the 1990s, kind of the mid to late 90s, the seals had been in a wide range of conflicts that they could draw experience from when looking and plan planning for the future. They'd been successfully integrated into the modern warfighting machine of the United States. And this is where the book Brave Men, Dark Waters ends. And author Or Kelly notes that a couple of points that he felt like worried him about the organization's future. So this is. Or writing post Desert storm and before 9 11. Right. About what he's afraid is going to happen to the seals in the future. The seals have not been very good at learning from their experiences, especially when things go wrong, and applying those lessons to the future. A meeting devoted to SEAL participation in Operation Just Cause was held shortly after the operation. But most of the seals present found the briefing unsatisfactory, and a few were so disturbed that they walked out. Right. That's the briefing on, like, that Panama shit show. And I don't know if they walked out because they were disturbed at how bad the planning was or were disturbed that guys didn't want them to do shit. Like, it's a little unclear to me, but it shows that there's this kind of institutional unwillingness to really critique as much of what they're doing. You know, you critique big Navy, and that's Orr's fear for the seals as they go forward. And it's gonna prove to be kind of prescient.

[Andrew T.]

It's really like these tough guys are kind of just soft baby boys at every turn. As soon as criticism of any kind,

[Bobby Finger]

to never be mean to them and always treat them like special angel boys. Yeah, it's weird for as tough as they claim to be. So there's a real debate post Gulf War about the purpose of Navy SEALs and what it should be in a world where guided missiles had relieved them of many of their previous duties of doing sabot. Well, we don't need to send, like, some guys in flippers to sabotage a refinery. We can shoot a missile at it, Right? In his book, orr noted that SEALs had previously focused primarily on their ability to influence events by violence, in contrast with the Army's Special Forces, and that they might need to learn more about how influencing hearts and minds should work. He's talking about Army Special Forces or the Green Berets, and he's talking about how the seals maybe in the future will need to be more like that. Right. And even then, some seals resisted this idea. As Orr wrote, one form of violence that SEALs talk about among themselves is the possibility of capturing or killing terrorist leaders or even foreign heads of state. One of the frustrations of their involvement in Desert Shield and the Desert Storm was that Saddam Hussein remained off limits. Attempting to take out Hussein would have been an assignment tailor made for the specially trained anti terrorist experts of SEAL Team 6. In fact, one former member of the team, while at the Naval Postgraduate School wrote a study of how the team might be used to carry out clandestine assassination attempts. His thesis remains highly classified. Cool. Just thinking about, you know, stuff, not necessarily the seals, but stuff Special Forces guys are doing in the Trump era to head to stage. Do you regret not going to college

[Andrew T.]

to write fanfic about fucking like murdering Saddam Hussein?

[Bobby Finger]

I do, I do. I mean I would have written fanfic about writing a novel with Saddam Hussein, which remains my chief goal. You know, I'm a fan of him for his other work. I don't forgive him for, you know,

[Andrew T.]

oh my God, for the crimes, but

[Bobby Finger]

his romance novels, you know,

[Andrew T.]

he's an artist. You got to separate the artist.

[Bobby Finger]

That's right, that's.

[Andrew T.]

And the artist.

[Bobby Finger]

Very hard to do with some so. Or Kelly also related his concern that seals in Panama had shown they had issues working in large multi platoon groups. Furthermore, their extraordinary abilities only really were at their peak when they had rapid air and artillery support. Right. The seals are only able to be the most effective when they have a lot of guys backing them. And if, you know, that had been a facet of most SEAL ops since nom. But that means like if you don't have access to that stuff, are they as capable, are they likely to get into problems, you know?

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

And the global war on tyranny, it's

[Andrew T.]

awfully stone soup with the seals, isn't it?

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, it's like it's all you need

[Andrew T.]

is Navy seals and fucking air support and an army behind them and they'll fucking do whatever you want. They're great.

[Bobby Finger]

They're great. With all the air support they can call in, they're deadly as hell. So the global war on terror would prove some of these fears prescient and give Marcinko's old unit in particular a chance to make a name for themselves as the President's assassins. Before all that, we get to the 90s, a glorious decade of peace and prosperity while nothing bad happened, if you don't count the Balkans or Rwanda or several other places. Anyway, in 1992, Richard Marcinko gets out of prison and publishes the book Rogue Warrior, which is the first account of life Inside Seal Team 6, written by a seal. Even though Marcinko was disgraced, it timed perfectly with the post Desert Storm hype and millions of copies were sold. So the book is a stupendous hit among civilians who wanted a glimpse inside the rarefied air of Special Forces. And they'd already thought these guys were basically superheroes. So Marcinko's bold claims didn't seem so wild. Like the reader is prepped to believe anything about a Seal Team 6 guy. Right. If he says he was doing crazy operations with Team Six while he was leading them, even though they really weren't doing all that much, it must be true, because he founded Seal Team 6. Right. How could he find it?

[Andrew T.]

Well, we're in the Van Damme era. We're in the Steven Seagal era. Of course. This is what they do. We see.

[Bobby Finger]

Says a lot about the veracity of Richard's first book, Rogue Warrior, that he follows his autobiography, his nonfiction autobiography, with a fiction novel series also called Rogue Warrior. What?

[Andrew T.]

Hell, yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

He creates a bunch of fiction novels with the same title and branding as his autobiography. That's supposed to be nonfiction.

[Andrew T.]

Makes sense.

[Bobby Finger]

I think the idea is these were based on the real classified missions to tell you about those, you know? But, yeah, I love when you do that voiceover.

[Andrew T.]

Based on a true story.

[Bobby Finger]

Based on a true story. That's all we need to put in the Hollywoods. They're like Rogue Warrior. That's right. Great title. Print it. The first of the fictional Rogue Warrior novels was Rogue Green Team, which spiraled out into the long series of subsequent novels ostensibly based on Marcinko's real life with him as the lead character. And also on the COVID Sophie's gonna show you a copy of Rogue Warrior two Red Cell. That's actually Richard Marcinko. He's got. He looks like Steven Seagal. Hold on, Andrew. Are you ready for this? Are you ready for this, Andrew?

[Andrew T.]

I don't think I am, actually.

[Bobby Finger]

Oh, man.

[Andrew T.]

Oh, what a bummer.

[Bobby Finger]

So, again, he's got a ponytail and a beard. He looks like seagal in the 90s. Purposefully, probably. He's wearing all black. He's got, like, an MP5 submachine gun crossed against. Over his heart, like it's a fucking, I don't know, a crucifix.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah, that's always dweebs.

[Bobby Finger]

Oh, man, it's so sad. Okay, Richard. Okay, man. It was through these novels, which make him a rich man, that Marcinko would prove himself forever the smartest member of Team 6. Instead of risking his freedom and money by telling US government secrets like some subsequent Team 6 members, he could just lie and pretend to be giving away secrets.

[Andrew T.]

Make shit up.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, just make shit Up. I need to read you how the book is still sold today. This is from the Audible Description. When Richard Marcinko wrote his best selling autobiography, Rogue Warrior, he and co writer John Weissman were bound by government restrictions and could only tell a fraction of his incredible story. Now the tales he could not tell, the secrets he could not reveal explode in Rogue Warrior 2. Red Cell, a riveting new novel with Marcinko himself as the hero.

[Andrew T.]

Oh, my God.

[Bobby Finger]

Love it, love it. I love the tales he couldn't tell. A riveting new novel with himself as the hero. Yeah, I'm sure these are real stories, Richard. So this is him. I picked Red Cell because we know the real Red Cell story. So here's what Richard wants people to believe. What he was doing with Red Cell. Instead of nearly getting his men killed by a dude's wife and having another one of them seriously injure himself. Torturing a man.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

Quote.

[Bobby Finger]

Freelance security consultant Dick Marcinko is playing terrorist at Tokyo's Narita Airport. Easily penetrating the facility's defenses, he engages in a deadly firefight with North Korean operatives and discovers that a group of traitorous Americans are smuggling nuclear materials to North Korea and Japan. With nowhere else to turn, the former Secretary of Defense recalls Marcinko to the Navy against his will to command Red Cell, a Dirty Dozen SEAL team Marcinko created. From infiltrating Washington's Navy Yard offices and secret nuclear weapons depot in California to raiding a North Korean Navy base and target far out in the Pacific, the rogue Warrior and his marauding Seals fight incredible odds and increasingly dangerous enemies. Yeah, that's real, man. Yeah, I love that. A group of traitorous Americans are smuggling nukes to North Korea and Japan, Allies in nuclear warfare. North Korea and Japan shaking hands. What is their plan? Why do North Korea and Japan want nukes together?

[Andrew T.]

It's just, you know, to.

[Bobby Finger]

For the vibes, I guess.

[Andrew T.]

It's Mechagodzilla.

[Bobby Finger]

Mecha might be Mechagodzilla. That's actually possible. That's possible. On September 11, 2001, some unfortunate things went down. And at the end of it, two pretty big buildings were gone because the guys behind this had mostly been Saudi terrorists living in Afghanistan. The United States goes to war with Afghanistan. From the beginning, it's pretty clear that this was not going to be a normal kind of conflict, in part because it's Afghanistan and wars don't tend to go very well there. Right. Yeah. A lot of the operational burden in Afghanistan from the beginning, we knew was going to be put on US Special Forces, right? And actually at the start, when US troops first enter Afghanistan, they're basically 100% of the war effort in the earliest days. It's not long after the Twin towers fell that the Navy SEALs, who were still largely the force they'd been in the 1990s at that point, which is, you know, men trained mostly for coastal operations, who specialized in hunting, tracking and destroying. Afghanistan was new terrain and a new kind of war to them. And when it began, most of them had no combat experience. And there were a lot of lessons that are going to be learned in Afghanistan and not all of it is going to be. I mean, there are a lot of lessons that are going to be learned in blood in Afghanistan, and it's not just going to be SEAL blood. Them fucking up is going to cost a lot of other people their lives. Some of this is just an unavoidable consequence of war. When you invade a country, especially with an army, where most people haven't like done that stuff before, even your special forces guys usually haven't been in combat, there's going to be even more mistakes than there normally is in a war if you've got like a lot of people who have been in combat before. So, like, that stuff's going to happen too. It's just you're going to have a lot of fuck ups in the early stages of Special Forces involvement, because in part, especially learning how to fight when

[Andrew T.]

you drop your water type Pokemon into

[Bobby Finger]

an earth arena, into an earth.

[Andrew T.]

This is as much as I know about that, but I feel like I'm correct.

[Bobby Finger]

That's more or less how military strategy works, actually. Andrew, you know who else knows how military strategy works? The sponsors of this podcast, all of whom are actively planning to invade the United States and subject it to an authoritarian rule.

[Andrew T.]

But you know that part's actually true. This is the closest to truth in

[Bobby Finger]

your afros I've heard in a while. This ad is brought to you by Veeve Healthcare, the makers of Dovato, Dolutegravir, lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Dovato. Dovato is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devato is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Dovato is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Dovato.

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[Bobby Finger]

Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devato.com or call 1-877-844-8872. Let's talk about a condition many people haven't heard of and it turns out it's more common than you'd think. Peyronie's disease, or PD for short. PD can happen when scar tissue builds up under the skin of the penis. This can ca curve with a bump during an erection and for some men lead to pain during intimacy and may impact mental health. It may also lead to anger and frustration, depression, lowered self esteem and even withdrawal from sexual activity and physical intimacy. Because of this, some men could feel embarrassed or reluctant to talk about pd. The actual cause of PD isn't always known. In some cases it may be linked to a minor injury or repeated injuries during sex or other physical activity. The good news is PD is treatable. If you notice a curve with a bump, a trusted urology specialist can help diagnose it and walk you through your options, including non surgical treatment. To learn more about Peyronie's disease, visit talkaboutpd.com Bite into a stacked sandwich made

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[Amy Ehrett]

I'm Amy Ehrett, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after my daughter. I started Madison Reed because I believe women deserve better. Better ingredients, better results, and the freedom to color on your terms. Color at home with our permanent hair color kit. It's a salon in a box for rich dimensional color and 100% gray coverage. Try our 10 minute root touch up kit for a permanent root refresh or our hair and brow mascara to cover stray grays on the go. Or visit one of our 95 plus hair color bars nationwide and let our licensed pro colorists color your hair for you. Join more than 5 million women who have made the switch. It's our birthday. Celebrate with 20% off your first order or service. Visit madison-reid.com and use code BIRTHDAY20. Confident, bold, unstoppable. That's the power of Madison Reed.

[Bobby Finger]

And we're back. So In January of 2002, a SEAL Team 6 officer named Vic Hyder murdered an unarmed Afghan man at the first Team 6 action of the war. Heiter had been leading a team to capture Al Qaeda guys in a compound. After the mission was completed, the seals took fire from somewhere. And after that, an old man walked up to them as they were evacing. So, right. They captured some guys in a compound. There's a firefight after it's completed. They're taking fire, but they can't see who's shooting at them. And then around the same time, an old man is just kind of walking because they're just out in Afghanistan and there's just a dude who lives there and he's walking around. And because it's dark, Heiter starts shouting at the man to stop. But this guy doesn't speak English. He's in his own country, he doesn't know what's being said, and he's elderly. He can't see for shit. And so he keeps stumbling in their direction. And Heiter, who's got, like, night vision and is not in direct danger from this man, decides he's close enough that if he has a grenade, he could hurt me. So I must assume he has a grenade and he shoots this elderly man to death. Right. The thing that had been in his hand that Haidar worried was a grenade turned out to be a cassette from a tape player. Now, again, if we're talking about. It's bad when cops do this all the time, but cops don't have very good. I mean, not. This is part. Here's what I'll tell you. This is why the training argument is bullshit for cops. Right? Cause the argument is, well, cops do this, but it's because we need to fix their training. These guys had all the training in the world. No cop will ever have more training than Vic Heiter is. He shot a man with a fucking cassette in his hand.

[Andrew T.]

Right? Right.

[Bobby Finger]

It's what you're asking them to do. There's no training that'll stop that. They make decisions themselves past a certain point. And a lot of guys in situations like this will decide my life matters more than any random dude whose country I just stepped into. Right? Yeah. Well.

[Andrew T.]

And you could argue that these guys clearly have been told they are so valuable as humans, that their life is worth much more than any random person. You know, the potential that they might be hurt means the other person has to die.

[Bobby Finger]

Vic says that, and I'm sure he was taught that. What should tell you that that's not universal is a bunch of his men complain. Right?

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

He's an officer. A bunch of his enlisted men, the guys that are supposed to be like, the real pipe hitters are like, that's fucked up, dude. You just murdered an old guy. And they complain and it gets put down to officer enlisted rivalry. They just don't like their officer, you know? Right.

[Andrew T.]

Jesus

[Bobby Finger]

Heider was not well liked in the unit for stuff like this. One reason, and this is a reason that also causes a lot of fucked up behavior, is that some officers don't all go through, like, the really intense selection process necessarily that SEALs enlisted, SEALs do.

[Andrew T.]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

You don't necessarily go through all of the same shit if you're an officer because it's a different job and the way you get there is different. Right. And that causes some of the conflicts. And some of these officers are insecure about maybe I don't really deserve to be here. And some of them compensate for that insecurity by becoming ultra violent.

[Andrew T.]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

That is a pattern that occurs among the teams periodically. It's not every officer who does this, but some of these guys, and it comes sometimes from insecurity. I'm sure some of them would do that if they were an enlisted man, too. Cause they're just psychos. Right. I'm just trying to provide you some explanation for the motivation.

[Andrew T.]

And it's obvious that could be a little of both.

[Bobby Finger]

Yes. Yes. It's Gotta be some of both. But the insecurity here isn't a zero percent of the fact.

[Andrew T.]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

Makes sense, right? Yeah. At the time of combat operations In Afghanistan, team six had about 200 operators split into three assault teams, blue, Red and Gold. Each team got a mascot. And proving that Navy Seals are no different than 15 year olds, this immediately started to get out of hand. Right? Because they get way too into their fucking mascots. Now the biggest problem is that Red team has a Native American stereotypical Native American warrior as their mascot. Right? And they call themselves the Red Men.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

Blue team are the Pirates and they fly a Jolly Roger into battle. And Gold team are the Knights or Crusaders. And they wear Crusaders crosses and lions. And you can imagine how comfortable some of this imagery gets.

[Andrew T.]

Jesus Christ. Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the worst would be the Red Men, the ones with like a racist nickname. In his book, Matthew Cole writes, quote, since the 1980s, when Red Team was first created, there were many operators in the unit who had experienced a metamorphosis of identity and Persona into Native American warriors. This is something that officers in the team who are critical of the culture will say, and some illicit guys. That's how they describe it, that it's a metamorphosis. These guys really believe. Again, you don't have to credit these guys as knowing anything about any Native American tribe, knowing anything about history, knowing anything but shit they've seen on bullshit movies. But they think that's cool and they get way into the idea. Right? That's all I'm saying.

[Andrew T.]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

They know what, it's a cartoon.

[Andrew T.]

Right.

[Bobby Finger]

I have never gotten enough detail about exactly what's meant by metamorphosis. I'd really like to talk to some dudes about that. But the most demonstrable part of it is unfortunately quite racist, which is that as the war on terror goes on, some of these dudes start taking scalps. Now, of course, this had not happened at the start of the. When Heiter's in, this doesn't start immediately, right? But Heiter is one of the guys who kind of starts the ladder of escalation of brutality that helps lead in that direction, right? And he's, among other things, he's a guy who feels like I need to prove I deserve to be here by being ultra violent.

[Andrew T.]

Right? So the classic small man bully, right?

[Bobby Finger]

Like five very small man.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

On March 6, 2002, Lieutenant Commander Heider led more than 20 SEAL Team Six operators into Chinooks on a mission to kill or capture Bin Laden. As you can guess from the date. It didn't go well. Intel had revealed an Al Qaeda convoy traveling in the area which was bombed by the US Air Force. Before the SEALs went in, some operators protested having the Air Force bomb the convoy. They were like, our job is to, like, be super discriminating guys who can get really close, and we could know if. Cause they didn't really know is this convoy bad guys or not? And our job should have been to get in there close and see if we needed to attack this convoy. Right. We could have verified that. And it turns out the intel was wrong. The Air Force had just bombed a family caravan, and their Chinooks gunners had unloaded into women and children who were being protected by the bodies of their men. And so when the seals land, they see these guys were like, throwing themselves these piles of corpses where men are trying to shield their children and wives from the gunfire of the ship that these SEALS had just been in. And it fucks some of these guys up, right? Yeah, it's a pretty awful thing to see. And not all of these guys are completely dead inside. And fine with that. Despite the fact that it's immediately clear none of these people were involved in anything, Heiter and several seals continued to treat them as combatants. Per Cole's book quote, Heiter said that he and a few other SEALS began to bury the casualties near a ravine by piling rocks over them. As he did so, he approached the man Heath had shot. He was partly, partially alive, face down, his back to me, and he rolled over. I shot him, finished him. He was dying, but he rolled over. And I didn't know whether he was armed or not. That was the end of that. Heiter said that his single shot had blasted open the man's head. So there's this guy who isn't dead, and this. Instead of trying to render aid, he's just like, well, I thought he might have had a weapon, so I shot him.

[Andrew T.]

Mentioning this guy who's dying on the ground might have a weapon is like, I guess that's peak cowardice. It's just like fucking.

[Bobby Finger]

And there's some. Some other seals who were there at the time who do complain about it. They say, like, well, they had weapons, but they were family weapons. Like, it's Afghanistan, people. It doesn't. Like, they're not Al Qaeda because they have a gun. You know, that's just life out here. So according to Heider, the encounter ended there after he shoots this wounded guy. But a retired SEAL who was there on the mission told a Different story to Cole. And according to this person, after Heiter shoots this wounded man, who was unarmed by the way, Heiter proceeded to mutilate his body by stomping in his already damaged skull and like, spreading brains out everywhere. And there's a chunk of guys who think this is cool, and there's a chunk of guys who are fucking horrified, right? Heath, who had shot the man initially and witnessed Heiter's actions, reports them to his team leader. He's like, look, I shot this guy because I thought I needed to. And then he just mutilates this guy, kills this guy when he doesn't need to, and mutilates his corpse. Like, I think that's fucked up and I don't feel good about it, right? When he does this quote, several of the guys turned and walked away. According to the retired seal, they were disgusted. He quoted Heath as saying, I'm morally flexible, but I can't handle that. Right? So the way, at least in this report, a lot of people are grossed out by what Heiter does. And he does start to get iced out from the seals at this point or from some units, they have this way of, if you're an officer and you're gross like that, when you rotate out, we don't have to let you back in. And so sometimes stuff like that happens. But what you should take from this isn't just that there are seals who are grossed out by this, who report him. There's also seals who think it's cool and you don't have a problem with it, right? And in this instance, maybe Heiter gets what I'd call a slap on the wrist. And there's a little bit of accountability, just a teeny amount. Eventually for him, not really much. But in the future, this is going to become like, in other units, when this stuff happens, it won't be. People won't complain, right? People will be okay with it. That's going to happen increasingly often after this point, too. And it's going to happen because of something that goes down. On March of 2002, a Team 6 SEALs under Master Chief Brit Slabinski are in a Chinook looking for a Bin Laden soaring over a mountain that they'd been told had no enemy presence. When they get hit with an rpg, Petty Officer First Class Neil Roberts falls from the bird, right? He'd been, you know, the chopper has like, I think it's ramp down and he's standing out there and it gets hit and he falls and he falls and hits so hard that he bends the stock of his rifle on the way down. So he doesn't have the normal armament that he would have even. They think he's, you know, they don't know if he's dead or not. But the pilot can't stop to rescue him, so they. They have to get back. And when they return the base with that chopper, Slabinski gets in another chopper with the rest of his men, and they head back to rescue Roberts. But in the interim period, Roberts had been found by Al Qaeda fighters, and they had killed him and stripped his body for gear. And one fighter had attempted to saw his head off as a trophy. Now, seals do this all the time. As we've talked about. When war hits a certain kind of level, people do this all over the world. There's no way to avoid types of this other than not going to war. You know, that's the real way if you want to ensure this shit doesn't happen. But again, these seals are new to Afghanistan, and this really, like, enrages them. These people, they lose their minds over the fact that their buddy got mutilated, even though some of them had already been mutilating dead Afghan people, right?

[Andrew T.]

That's pretty standard for these guys. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Can't do that to us.

[Bobby Finger]

No, no, you can't do that to us. In Code over country, Matthew Cole quotes a former Team 6 leader as saying, when you see your friend killed, recover his body and find that the enemy mutilated him. It's a schoolyard mentality. You guys want to play with those rules, okay? And although this former SEAL acknowledged that war crimes are bad, he understood how often they happened. Quote, you asked me to go living with the pigs. I can't go live with the pigs and then not get dirty. And this is, again, this is bad. This is the kind of thing, there should be accountability. The military should be cracking down on this shit more, right? Like, this is not the sort of thing that should be allowed to happen. It's also, if you're going to vote to send guys to war, like this stuff like this is going to happen. He is right about, if you ask me to go living with the pigs, I can't go live with the pigs. Are anyone you ask to go murder people in the middle of nowhere repeatedly, right? Regardless of what side they're on, they're wind up doing ugly things. Because that's what happens when you wind up in that kind of a fight. And yeah, it's. The issue is that this becomes an excuse that, like, well, this is inevitable to Some extent becomes like, so we can't get angry when guys do it? As opposed to.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

No.

[Bobby Finger]

That means if you think this war is really necessary, you actually have to punish those guys immediately and incredibly harshly, even though you know it's going to happen to some of them and that's going to be bad to morale because otherwise things get much worse and you wind up defeating your own attempts to win hearts and minds and stop people from trying to kill your dudes, which is what happens in Afghanistan. There's a direct correlation in a lot of provinces between war crimes committed by Navy seals and excesses by US Special Forces and the number of Taliban fighters in activity and recruitment and whatnot. Right. This stuff pisses people off. Just like, I mean, Abu Ghraib around the same time in Iraq really pisses people off. Right. It pisses a lot of Iraqis off. It generates more resistance because it's horrifying to see Americans doing stuff like this to dudes in your country. And this, you know, this is the thing that frustrates me most in some ways about the seals, which is that they understand that their job is to be extraordinary and they're very proud of that. But they think this really only extends. There's too many of them think that this really only extends to their ability to kill, not their ability to keep their head and their sense of morality in a horrific situation. I would say if you want to call yourselves truly elite, the best of the best, exquisitely trained, those are the guys that you can trust, would be able to trust to put into a situation like this for months at a time and then not start massacring civilians. I would say that's an elite unit. When you do this kind of shit where you just like the Taliban. Right, right, that part. Why do I feel better about you than that?

[Andrew T.]

Yeah, of course.

[Bobby Finger]

Right, exactly.

[Andrew T.]

Just a little bit of fucking self control.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, yeah. Because honestly, if you're supposed to be elite, your actual stated job is live with the pigs and don't get dirty.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

Cause you're better than them if you are, but you're not. Right.

[Andrew T.]

I never have.

[Bobby Finger]

And they want to be while acting the same way. Right. Anyway. And I think part of the reality is that like Richard Marcinko and a lot of team 6 guys after him just wanted to be really well funded and supported pigs, you know, unfortunately.

[Andrew T.]

Right, right, right.

[Bobby Finger]

That attitude is still present among team Some people in Team 6 in 2002 and almost 20 years after Marcinko's departure. Its presence, and certainly in chunks of the seals across a number of different teams. The brutality in Afghanistan divided the men who saw themselves as quivat professionals and harken back to the old UDT days. From the men, more poured in Marcinko's mold. And this would come to a head in early March of 2002 after Haider's mutilation of the wounded man and after Robert's Ridge. Right. So this is all going down in, like the spring of 2002. Roughly 40 Seal Team 6 men meet at Bagram Air Base to discuss what Heiter had done and what had happened to Roberts and be like, so should we just start committing war crimes? Because the Taliban are. What do we do? And they talk. And the claim that Cole reports in his book is that 35 of the 40 guys wound up agreeing, we can shoot them and move on, but we don't mutilate them. That's not honorable. Right. But five guys are like, I think I should be able to mutilate people. I don't know if that's the actual ratio. It doesn't seem impossible to believe. And I think the ratio would be a lot worse today, to be honest. You know, I could believe that in 2002, maybe. That's much earlier.

[Andrew T.]

Well, it's like the bad apples thing. It's just like the bunch is getting spoiled guys.

[Bobby Finger]

Exactly. And this, this bunch who vote not to mutilate corpses are still responsible for helping to spoil the rest of the apples. Because even though they agree we don't do that, that's not honorable. And they don't like Heiter. No one reports his war crime. He's not punished. Right. He's pushed out of the teams quietly. Right. And they'll deny. They won't let him get posted there again, but that's it, you know, like, they're not. Because you don't do that in the seals. You don't punish your own guys, you know?

[Andrew T.]

Jesus.

[Bobby Finger]

This is Marcinko's favorite way of dealing with seals who didn't fit in. So crazy. Just, you know, icing them out of the team. But it also means that the established standard is that guys who commit war crimes get iced out and not punished and often continue their military careers elsewhere. This is well known to the rest of the Navy. Susan Razor, a retired Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent, told Matthew Cole her opinion that, quote, the SEALs believe that they can handle the discipline themselves that's equal or greater to what the criminal justice system would give to that person. And reading between the lines, I think that at least some of this refusal to hold their own accountable comes from a fear that a lot of the saner seals have of their more piratical peers and colleagues. Right. You get some of this in an account of that meeting by a retired. That big SEAL meeting about whether we should mutilate corpses. And this is from a retired non commissioned seal, Fifi, that's Roberts was mutilated. And then we had to address a very important question. How do you get the guy's head straight to mitigate any retaliation for Fifi? Otherwise we knew it's going to get out of control. A third of the guys literally think they're Apache warriors. Then you had the Muslim way of her moving ahead. I understand the desire, I don't condone it. But there was definite retaliation, right?

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

So again, you've got this guy, he's trying to defend his unit, but he's too honest to be like, yeah, but like these guys are. A lot of these guys are literally insane. And the fact that like some of these Taliban guys are pretty out there too, is just making them crazy crazier. It's feeding into their delusions. You've got two groups of really extreme, heavily armed maniacs hunting each other and it's making them all get hideously more violent, especially to the civilians.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

That's this guy's argument.

[Andrew T.]

And we're the good guys.

[Bobby Finger]

And we're the good guys, though. Even though you really can't tell it the difference from looking at all the brains splattered on the ground. So in this account, Heiter's mutilation gets sort of grandfathered in under the general belief that we have to allow some kind of retaliation from the craziest of the seals in order to keep the units functional. Heiter, for his part, denies that he ever desecrated the body of an enemy fighter or a dead enemy civilian. To this day, quote, this is what Heiter said. Somebody else is making this up. Memories get distorted over 14 years. They're telling you how they remember it. There was a lot of chaos. I'm telling you the absolute truth. I actually don't know who's right. You know, to be honest, it's entirely possible someone besides Heiter did that mutilation should get fucked up. Like stuff like that happens. People forget like it's war fucks with your mind, even if you're there. I don't, I don't. I literally don't know. But so many guys talk about this that, like, I think I know what the likeliest thing is right it's more or less the story that Most of these seals told Cole. A lot of or several seals told Cole. So Team 6 leadership analyzed Heiter's performance after their deployment and concluded that he'd been a dangerous officer for several reasons. Despite being a ground commander, he'd repeatedly killed perceived enemies on his own rather than having his men do it. And again, the officer. You're supposed to be able to fight. You need to sometimes, but you're there for other reasons. You're the officer. There's a reason. If you're constantly just shooting dudes that you don't, like, need to.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

Then that kind of means you're not doing your job as an officer. Right?

[Andrew T.]

Right. It's like one thing if the assistant manager pulls a Slurpee himself, but, like, yes. Yeah, yeah.

[Bobby Finger]

And does it once. But if you're constantly doing it like you're kind of not doing your other job. And one former SEAL called this a total breakdown of operational tactics. This also gets back to something Marcinko seeded into the unit. Officers and enlisted have very different, but not lesser job descriptions. That's the way it should work. Right. You need both. However, Marcinko's culture totally venerated the enlisted man and demonized officers. So insecure guys like Heiter came to feel that the best way to earn their place as a real pipe hitter is to just start blasting dudes as soon as they see them. And this is not going to be the last time that causes a problem. But this is the end. End of part three. We did it.

[Andrew T.]

Yay. Still grim. Still grim as fuck.

[Bobby Finger]

Yeah, it's gonna get grimmer. I don't know why I said it that way. Andrew, you want to do a plug real quick?

[Andrew T.]

Sure, sure. Let's see. I used to do the yo, is this racist Podcast. We're putting that on pause a little bit, but in the same feed, we're doing a podcast called Starter Trek. That's me, Tawny Newsome. Our producer is Jesse Gender. We're also on YouTube. I'm watching a lot of Star Trek for the first time. They're watching a lot of Star Trek for, like, the billionth time. So, yeah, it's been fun. It's been nice to not to take a little racism break. Surprise, surprise. Still plenty of shit to talk about in Star Trek.

[Bobby Finger]

Well, listeners, why don't you all take a racism break? And we'll be back on Thursday. Huzzah.

[Andrew T.]

Peace.

[Bobby Finger]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out

[Ad/Promo Voice]

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

[Bobby Finger]

wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

Full video episodes of behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com BehindTheBast we love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

[Bobby Finger]

Let's talk about Peyronie's disease, or pd. It's not widely talked about and some men may feel reluctant to bring it up, but it's more common than you'd think. PD can happen when scar tissue builds up under the skin of the penis, causing a curve with a bump during an erection that, for some men may lead to pain during intimacy and impact mental health. A trusted urology specialist can help diagnose PD and walk you through your options, including non surgical treatment. Visit talkaboutpd.com your social media feed delivers

[Ad/Promo Voice]

plenty of advice, but it doesn't know you. It doesn't ask questions. It doesn't give physical exams or order tests doctors do. At the American Medical association, we believe the best care starts with a real conversation with someone who understands the science and your unique health. So stay curious. Ask questions, but when it's time to make decisions, make them with a doctor. Learn [e-mail] that's amahealthvshipe.org this is Troy

[Bobby Finger]

Millings from Earn your leisure when traveling for events or festivals throughout the country, every dollar matters. We compare flights, prices, hotel rates and restaurant options. So why wouldn't we compare rides? Personally, I always check Lyft before booking a ride. Prices can change throughout the day depending on traffic, weather and what's happening in the city. If you're headed to a concert, out to dinner, or catching up with your friends on a Friday night, taking a few seconds to check Lyft could leave you with more money to enjoy the experience.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

Save money.

[Bobby Finger]

Check Lyft hello beautiful.

[Amy Ehrett]

I'm Amy Ehrett, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after my daughter. I started Madison Reed because I believe women deserve better better ingredients, better results and the freedom to color on your terms. Color at home with our permanent Hair Color Kit. It's a salon in a box for rich dimensional color and 100% gray coverage. Try our 10 minute root touch up Kit for a permanent root refresh or our hair and brow mascara to cover stray grays on the go. Or visit one of our 95 plus hair color bars nationwide and let our licensed pro colorists color your hair for you. Join more than 5 million women who have made the switch. It's our birthday. Celebrate with 20% off your first order or service. Visit madison-reid.com and use code BIRTHDAY20. Confident. Bold. Unstoppable. That's the power of Madison Reed.

[Ad/Promo Voice]

This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.